Wanderers' treble chance - chairman

But he sympathised with fans critical of the lack of investment in the transfer market.

The Bolton chairman, whose connections date back to his schooldays as a regular on the terraces at Burnden Park, is "honoured" and "excited" to be leading the club back to elite status but admits: "If I didn't understand the financial situation as I do, I would probably be saying 'What's going on?'"

Promotion back to the top flight will guarantee Wanderers a windfall of £20m-£25m, even if they are instantly relegated. Yet they go into tomorrow's first game of the season at Leicester having spent just £650,000 in transfer fees.

That has not, necessarily, been for the want of trying since Sam Allardyce has had the scope to make substantial but ultimately unsuccessful bids of £3.5 million and £2.5 million respectively for Paris Saint Germain defender Sylvain Distin and Strasbourg striker Pegguy Luyindula in recent weeks. But there has been no hiding the fact that the manager has had a tight rein on his spending.

With debts in excess of £30 million and having learned painful lessons in the past, the club's directors are not willing to risk jeopardising their plans to lay a strong financial foundation on which to build future success.

"What fans have to accept is that, as a business, we can't afford to continually lose the sort of money we have been losing," Mr Gartside explained.

"We obviously get a commitment for a year from the Premier League and it's worth a minimum of about £13m-£14m but that doesn't all come in at once. Then you've got a further commitment for the following two years of half the basic payout, which is currently about £10m. So you're probably looking at between £20m and £25m as a basic payout.

"But what we inherited two years ago, when we took over as a new regime, was in the order of £30 million of debt. That increased last year when we brought in players and ran the business with more people than we originally planned to. As a result, we won promotion ... it was a gamble but it was a much bigger gamble than the average fan realises.

"We can't live with a £30 million debt forever. We've got to find a way of funding that and paying it off."

The Wanderers' chief, who is also chairman of the club's parent company, Burnden Leisure plc, revealed in the Bolton Evening News last season that the company was looking to secure a mortgage to spread the debt burden over a longer period to ease the financial pressures. But that has still not materialised.

"We've got to prove to a financier on a long-term basis that we can pay a mortgage," he said. "But we haven't got a track record to get long-term money and that's something we've been trying to resolve.

"We've got to find a way of making money this year."

Foundations

Despite the financial constraints and a determination to reduce the wage bill down from its current level of 66 per cent to 50 per cent of annual turnover, Mr Gartside says Wanderers have still invested heavily in their playing squad - even though the only fee they have paid is the £650,000 for Danish striker Henrik Pedersen.

"This year we have committed ouselves to spending the money that is coming in from the Premiership. We're not holding anything back, it's going on extra wages.

"But we've got to have a situation where at least the company makes some money. We can't afford to go on and on losing money.

"We can't commit ourselves to transfer fees of the nature of £10m or £15m but we have actually improved the squad by bringing in loan players - Djibril Diawara and Akinori Nishizawa - to whom we are committing more wages in addition to signing Hendrik Pedersen and Nicky Southall. We have also retained the services of players who were out of contract - Gudni Bergsson, Dean Holdsworth, Paul Warhurst and Ian Marshall - and we have extended the contracts of Ricky Gardner, Jussi Jaaskelainen, Gareth Farrelly and Michael Ricketts. So we have laid down the foundations of the squad.

"We've made those commitments and our wage bill has nearly trebled ... it's a big number!

"We also have options to buy the loan players so, if they do well for us, we will find the money. And if they do well for us, you'd expect us to be in the Premier League next year. That's what's not showing through when you just look at the £650,000 - and we've also made substantial bids for players and not, unfortunately, been able to secure their services."

The temptation to speculate to accumulate is a constant factor when the bait is Premiership glory but Wanderers learned an expensive lesson in the 1997-98 season when they spent a record £11 million on new players and were still relegated. They are determined not to be caught in the same trap again.

Mr Gartside, who has the difficult job of balancing ambition and prudence, insists: "We wouldn't be doing our job properly if we went out and spent the way we spent before.

"When we went down last time, we were in danger of slipping out of the leagues. We were that much in debt we couldn't do anything. We had to sell a team to survive - not to get promotion again. The achievement has been, having sold that team to survive, we've actually got promoted.

"We did that by doing exactly what we have done this year - loan players, players coming in on short-term contracts then, when they've proved themselves, extending their contracts - and we got a promotion team out of it.

"Now the skill's going to be getting a survival team out of what we've done again.

"If we survive, we get another year's Premiership money and then we've reduced the debt further and can move forward. But, if the worst comes to the worst and we go down, we will be in a position to challenge for promotion, which we weren't before, because we will have the money from the Premier League.

"And, whereas we were committed to using the parachute payment last time to bail ourselves out, if we can control it the way we are doing, we will have enough money the following year to challenge for promotion without busting the company.

"We're not being negative, we are actually securing the future of the company."